Feeling a bit 'tyred' Biglorryblog is going to have to 'tread' a bit carefully...anyway I'm here to tell you that Stoke is home to the darkest museum in the country. And not alot of people know that. In the furthest flung corner of Michelin's Campbell Road site is museum which is home to the blackest collection of potentially deadly artefacts in the country. If misused (which they regularly are) such dark items can cause considerable damage, which is why these examples are assembled together in an educational exhibition.
So, what is this house of horrors Biglorryblog I hear you ask? The Michelin Black Museum is an automotive anthology of the damage that can be caused to a vehicle's tyres. There are around 200 examples in what's believed to be the most comprehensive compilation of the potentially devastating causes and effects of mistreated and broken tyres in the UK. And if you fancy 'casing' the joint, click through here for more....
The PR blurb goes on to say: "The Black Museum is part of Michelin's training centre, which offers courses ranging from time management for Company staff, to specialised programmes designed to teach Police Collision Investigators to assess how a tyre could have contributed to an accident. Richard Whitehurst, Commercial Training Manager at the Centre explains to me: "We've around 200 car, van, bus, truck and motorbike tyres and tyre sections in our collection. They're not all ours, it's not a Michelin only collection. The point is that they've been damaged by a very wide variety of causes from under-inflation to mounting curbs to being slashed and just about anything else you can think of."
Richard goes on to say: "We teach Police forces how to inspect a tyre, determine its condition and then identify what set of circumstances led to that condition. These are very highly trained professionals looking for subtle witness marks, scrapes, wear patterns and so on, to establish how a tyre has been used and to conclude how differently it might have performed with different treatment. It's an invaluable skill to have when trying to find out exactly how an incident occurred. The tyre tells a story and it never lies."
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